


A Black Shade of Blue

by dreamiflame



Category: La Barbe bleue | Bluebeard - Charles Perrault
Genre: Blood and Gore, Dark, F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-10-31 19:27:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10905912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/pseuds/dreamiflame
Summary: The story of Bluebeard's first wife, and what she found in the forbidden chamber.





	A Black Shade of Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> I loved your prompts, thedevilchicken! It got away from me, but I hope you enjoy it just the same.
> 
> I took a few lines from the original story as provided by the sources list.
> 
> Thanks to my beta for encouraging and helping polish.

Elinor met the man who would be her husband at a ball. In those days, he had black hair upon his head, and a fine black beard to match, though in certain lights the hair of his beard would seem to be almost blue. Then he would toss his head and laugh, and the illusion would fade, his beard returning to its normal black color.

Elinor wasn’t in love with him, but she wasn’t fool enough to be holding out for love, either. She was the eldest of four daughters, and not the most beautiful, so to have made such an eligible match was beyond her wildest hopes. For it was said that her husband to be was rich, with two fine houses, one in the city they lived in, and another in the country. He had plate of silver, richly carved furniture, and even a coach gilded at the edges with gold. Elinor would be a rich woman, once the marriage had taken place.

Her family, although well born, were not wealthy, and her dowry was small, but her bridegroom only laughed when told that.

“I have riches enough for the both of us!” he proclaimed, and the candles flickered with the gust of wind from his loud voice. For a moment, the black hair of his beard again appeared blue.

Elinor blinked, and he was standing next to her, taking her hand and smiling, his beard perfectly, evenly black. “And once I have my bride, I shall have everything a man could desire.” He pressed his lips her the back of Elinor’s hand, and his beard was scratchy against her skin.

Still, she had no reason to complain, and the wedding took place as planned. Elinor moved into his fine country house and explored all over, admiring the heavy plate of silver, the cunningly carved furniture of the finest, most aromatic wood, the shiny coach gilded at the edges with a king’s, or at the least, a duke’s ransom. She was happy. Elinor’s husband bought her fine gowns to wear, and made her gifts of beautiful jewels. She twirled in her finery before her silver backed mirror, and laughed at the picture she made.

About a month after they had wed, Elinor’s husband called her to him one morning. “I must take a trip,” he said, and Elinor made the proper sort of protests. “It will be a long trip, perhaps six weeks or a little more. You must call for your friends and relations, and have them keep you company in my absence.”

“I shall,” Elinor agreed, for it sounded ever so delightful to her, to be mistress of her own home and invite whichever friends most pleased her. Her husband smiled, the expression tilting his beard so that the hairs, for just a moment, seemed blue in the dappled sunlight.

“Here are my keys,” he told her, and showed her the key to the wardrobe full of furniture, and the key for the plate chest, where the silver lay, as it was not in everyday use. There were keys for the chests for her jewels, and his money, gold and jewels and silver coins, which she might need to purchase supplies for her parties. Keys for the wine cellar, and the spice caskets, and all the apartments of the house. And finally, a little golden key. He took special care in pointing it out, telling Elinor that while she was welcome to open the locks with any of the other keys, this one she must not use.

“It goes to the little closet on the ground floor, which is my own personal space,” he said, and his beard flashed blue in the early morning light, so briefly Elinor almost missed it as she blinked. “If you open it, you may expect my just anger and resentment.”

“Of course I won’t,” Elinor said, and he looked searchingly into her eyes before he put the heavy ring of keys into her hand.

“I knew I could trust you,” he said, and he embraced her, got in his coach, and left.

Elinor finished her breakfast, and sat at the heavy wooden desk in his office to write a series of letters. She wrote to her sisters, and to her brothers, inviting them to come and stay with her, in the big empty house. She wrote to the friends of her heart, begging them to relieve her tedium with their company. She wrote to the neighbors, nearby, though she never had cause to send those letters, as her neighbors wasted no time in accepting her unsent invitation.

Soon the house was full of people, and Elinor began to use the keys. She opened the wardrobes of furniture, and her guests exclaimed over the clever, lifelike carvings. She opened the chest of silver plate, and the dishes were passed from hand to hand (getting very smudged as they went), the people remarking loudly over the weight and craftsmanship. She opened the chests of jewels and gold and silver, which were much admired, but not pilfered, as she kept a close eye on wandering fingers.

Elinor explored the house with her guests, and listened to them extol her happiness, and bemoan their envy, and tried to keep the smile on her face. She had used all the keys but the little one to her husband’s private closet, and now, having seen the pleasures of opening locks, she burned to open this final lock.

But she had people to attend to, and she was not so badly brought up that she would abandon them merely to satisfy her curiosity. Her husband would be gone for weeks. Elinor had time to consider if she dared to face the full might of his wrath if she disobeyed.

Which was stronger: her loyalty, or her curiosity?

After some days of entertaining, her guests went home, and Elinor roamed the halls of the house. She opened the doors with the keys, and looked inside to admire her treasures - her husband’s treasures, so kindly shared with her. Then she would lock the room up again, and walk to the next door.

Circuit after circuit of the house she found herself in front of the forbidden door, key in her hand. Elinor pressed her ear to the door, but could hear nothing. She traced the shape of the key, holding it up to the keyhole again and again, but never quite daring to press it in. She would stand before the door, for an hour or more, and then, mistress of herself again, let the key fall back against the others. Elinor would turn away from the door and find a different room to explore.

But the other rooms soon became tedious in their familiarity, and the forbidden door more tempting in its mystery. When she stood before the door, her ear pressed to it, key clutched tight in her fingers, Elinor would swear the key grew warm. The door seemed more welcoming and inviting each time she passed by.

One day, a dreary day with no sun and fitful spatters of rain, Elinor locked the wine cellar back up and walked the familiar path to the door of her husband’s closet. The house was quiet- her guests had all gone days before, and the servants had learned not to bother their mistress while she stared at the door.

Elinor lifted the small gold key, feeling it warm until the metal fair scorched her fingers, and lined it up with the keyhole.

“You may expect my just anger and resentment,” her husband said, in her memory, but his voice was thin and brittle compared to the siren song of the door.

 _Open me_ , it seemed to say, and Elinor took a deep breath and pushed the key into the lock. It went smoothly, and she stopped there, frozen for a moment by the unreasonable terror that her husband would come home that moment, and find her disobeying him.

But nothing happened, and Elinor let out the breath she’d been holding and turned the key in the lock.

The door seemed to fly open on its own, and Elinor looked inside, fully expecting more wonders of the kind her husband had in all his other rooms.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness in the room, then Elinor began to make out the details of the closet. A scream caught in her throat, and she raised her hands to her mouth to hold it in, key pulled free of the lock but still burning hot against her lips.

There was blood on the floor, clotted blood in the shape of a great circle, with a star in the middle of it. In the center of the star was a stand, and a wide, shallow bowl was on the stand.

In the bowl was more blood, and a severed heart, which yet pulsed in the normal way before her horrified eyes.

Still clutching the keys to her mouth, Elinor stumbled backwards, out of the room of horrors, and slammed the door. She fumbled the little key back into the keyhole and frantically locked the forbidden door. Then she raced to her bedchamber and threw herself on her bed, crying as though she wept for her parents’ death.

Elinor couldn’t sleep that night, the room and its ghastly contents invading every dream she started to have. Morning found her back on the ground floor, before the little door, a candle in one hand, the key in the other. This time, the bloody details were even more clear, and unbeknownst to her, she dropped the key into the blood of the circle as she stared at the heart beating in the bowl.

A few hours later, her husband found her there, watching the heart- _his_ heart, Elinor somehow knew that as soon as she saw it. He went directly to the little closet from the front door, and saw Elinor there, her face as white as paper and the hem of her dress dragging in the bloody circle.

She gave a great start when he said her name, and scooped the keys from the floor, clutching them to her chest. The little golden key was red with blood, and she rubbed at it as he scolded her. “I told you not to come in here!” he thundered.

Elinor looked up at him, numb with horror and fear. “You’re a magician,” she said, and her husband frowned deeply. He took a long, deliberate step towards her, and Elinor shrank back, only to run into the stand holding his heart. “You removed your heart!”

“Oh, Elinor,” he said with a sigh, and quick as a fox he darted forward and grabbed her by the shoulders. “I never promised it to you.”

Then his hands were around her throat, and Elinor fought until she swooned, until her throat gave out, until she heard bones crack as she died.

When Elinor could see again, her husband was laying the body she would no longer need down at the edge of the room and frowning at it. At first she thought it a trick of the light, but the more she looked at him, the more she could see that the blue, always so intermittent before, had become a distinct tone in his beard.

“Now what am I going to do for a wife?” Elinor’s husband murmured, and took his keys back from her corpse. He ran his thumb over the bloody key and it shone gold again at once, the crimson gone as though it had never been.

He picked up Elinor’s guttering candle, looked straight through her ghost, and shook his head. “Ah, Elinor. Curiosity will be the death of you, my sweet.”

Then he locked the closet door behind him, and Elinor followed, dragged along in his wake as an unwilling shadow witness to the rest of his horrid life.


End file.
